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No longer a patch on the meeting it used to be when you could expect to see genuine Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup contenders having their final prep run, as well as potential future stars in the supporting 4yo maiden hurdle and the 2M novice chase.
The Kingwell Hurdle now sits rather sadly on a card that includes five moderate handicaps, but I was still prepared to go along and enjoy an afternoon out, until I read this:
“Student raceday: Traffic management plan and noise management plan active for music between racing.”
That noise you can hear being managed, is the bottom of a barrel being scraped.
As I said last week about Wolverhampton, I am in favour of student days. However, I think Wincanton should have chosen a different day. The Kingwell is still its best race and that day should have been left for core racegoers.
It was a real pity that they turned the Jim Ford Challenge Cup into a handicap. A fine race in its heyday, won by the likes of Silver Buck, Desert Orchid, Diamond Edge, Kildimo, Cavvies Clown, See More Business and others. And then, of course, it disappeared completely.
Another race/raceday ruined…..the Kingwell Hurdle won by Alderbrook having his first run since Longchamps in October, before winning the Champion.
The Jim Ford Chase, what a roll of honour – what happened to that? Another great race gone/ ruined. Why do they make these decisions?
Is it any wonder the sport is in a mess, when things like this happen.Thing is, even in the heyday of these races, they never attracted big fields but as long as you attracted the best horses around, you could always justify a ‘small but select field’ of runners.
But with the way the top horses are campaigned (or not in a lot of cases) these type of races will nearly always be given a miss by them (especially with its proximity to Cheltenham). I would suggest that the only chance you would have of a top contender running in this race nowdays would be if injury/abandonment meant that they had yet to have a run and they were desperate to do so before Cheltenham.
Sad but you can only depend on a rich back history for so long if you can’t attract top horses and one might argue that its G2 status is overdue in being taken from the race.
I was just thinking today how I never missed going to Kingwell Hurdle Day from mid-1980’s through to the 2000’s. Not sure if I saw Desert Orchid win the Kingwell so might have been 87. Certainly saw Dessie win the Jim Ford. Floyd won two Kingwells and he was one of my all time favourites. Kribensis, Alderbrook, Hors La Loi, Katchit, Azertyuiop, Inglis Drever, Binnocular… And before I was even interested in racing, Bula and Lanzarote… All winners of the Kingwell.
So disappointing it’s gone so downhill. Realised the Jim Ford had gone, but… the rest of the card!
Value Is EverythingKribensis , from back in the day Maktoums and Juddmonte flirted with jumps Royal Gait , Highland Bud, Sanmartino and Moonax ran ok when he wasn’t eating his handler , I think Sangster had a go as well with Nomadic Way . Seems so so long ago . Good days of jump racing .
The decline can be dated to the decision to switch from Thursday to Saturday. The last Kingwell on a Thursday was in 2002, won by Hors La Loi, who duly won the Champion Hurdle the following month.
The first Saturday version saw the Jim Ford renamed the Country Gentlemans Association Chase, which was initially a Listed race, then a limited handicap, before disappearing in 2009. The last winner of the race was Neptune Collonges. There was talk of the race being transferred to Ascot, but there’s no evidence that ever happened.
Initially the Saturday move produced slightly larger crowds, but that effect has worn off and the average is now around 3,000. I suspect it was originally based on getting TV coverage, which again worked for a while, but as yesterday demonstrated, it’s just a fill-in now between races at Ascot. The race is never going to attract the best hurdlers as things stand, because the stable jockeys are riding at Ascot or Haydock.
Student raceday: Traffic management plan and noise management plan active for music between racing
Like Cork All Star I’ve nothing against student racedays per se: if memory serves there used to be – and might still be – a University of York Turf Club, who once actually sponsored a race at York
Music during sporting events seems to be a growing and – in my view – unwelcome trend. The current Six Nations rugby being a case in point, as whenever there’s a pause in play some booming racket strikes up. Likewise during international short-format cricket
Furthermore, intrusive muzak seems to be deemed necessary in TV dramas and documentaries. I’ve found the recent Attenborough docs barely watchable thanks to the ghastly near-continuous ‘mood music’ drowning out the natural sounds: defeating half the object surely?
Music – in the loosest sense of the term – infiltrates everywhere, save for Wetherspoons
the beginning of wisdom is silence
Yesterday sums up current racing, and changes which haven’t worked. Ascot, Haydock & Wincanton all on the same day…..shouldn’t happen.
Ascot was a Wednesday afternoon card – back in 1989 it hosted what was then the richest one day meeting, over £100,000 in prize money; a 2m nov hurdle won by Morley Street, a 3m hurdle won by Calapaez, the Reynoldstown, plus the 3m Charterhouse Mercantile chase, in which Bonanza Boy fell. I recall listening on BBC Radio 2 in school on a transisitor radio in a double art class…..
Wincanton used to be next Thursday with the Kingwell & Jim Ford, and Haydock had what was then the Greenalls Gold Cup – a Grand National trial……plus the Victor Ludorum 4yo Hurdle, which attracted a decent horse. They’ve now got the Rendlesham hurdle, which was at Kempton on Racing Post chase day…..
Racing likes to portray itself as a traditional sport – but actually it isn’t. It will move races from one course to another for no good reason, bin races off at the drop of a hat, and change race names when they feel like it.
They bang on about the heritage of British racing being its biggest selling point over any other jurisdiction but are quick to bin the famous race names and relegate them to a ‘registered as…..’ moniker whilst applying some daft usually long winded sponsor based name as the new title.
With sponsors changing quite often every few years and applying their own name to the race we still harken back to the old names where the sponsors were there for so long that the sponsor’s name became so synonymous with the name of the race that you only had to say the name to know what race you were talking about……Whitbread, Hennessy, Massey Ferguson, Mackeson, Schweppes, Sun Alliance to name a few.
Even the Supreme Novice Hurdle (or the Gloucestershire Hurdle as it started out life as, which I did know) gets its name from Waterford Crystal who gave that ‘Supreme’ name when taking over sponsorship in 1978 (something I did not know) and who knew that Sun Alliance/Baring Bingham/Ballymore/Neptune Hurdle started life out as the Aldsworth Hurdle in 1971.
It just goes to show how much of an impact a long term sponsors can have, Whitbread was the first commercial sponsorship in British sport when its name was put to the inaugural running of the Sandown race in 1957 and when it ended in 2001 it was the longest running sponsor until Hennessy ended their involvement with Newbury in 2016 (its inaugural running in 1957 was actually at Cheltenham)…..alas those days are long since passed and with it a big part of that heritage with sponsors now coming and going like a revolving door in most cases.
I do fear for this race’s future and I think the best thing would be to either move it back to a mid week date and try to ensure that the meeting gets ITV coverage or find a different less congested Saturday to move it to but I doubt the powers that be are that interested in doing something like that, as we know they really don’t have the stomach for radical thinking to fix a clear problem.
“Student raceday: Traffic management plan and noise management plan active for music between racing
Like Cork All Star I’ve nothing against student racedays per se: if memory serves there used to be – and might still be – a University of York Turf Club, who once actually sponsored a race at York
Music during sporting events seems to be a growing and – in my view – unwelcome trend. The current Six Nations rugby being a case in point, as whenever there’s a pause in play some booming racket strikes up. Likewise during international short-format cricket
Furthermore, intrusive muzak seems to be deemed necessary in TV dramas and documentaries. I’ve found the recent Attenborough docs barely watchable thanks to the ghastly near-continuous ‘mood music’ drowning out the natural sounds: defeating half the object surely?
Music – in the loosest sense of the term – infiltrates everywhere, save for Wetherspoonsthe beginning of wisdom is silence”
I concur entirely Drone, I find all this unnecessary noise quite depressing. Which bright sparks actually thought “pop tunes” would enhance a day at the races?
It literally drives me up the wall to hear every winner at York and elsewhere accompanied into the winners enclosure by a “tune”
Surely there must be plenty of posters on here who approve if the racecourses are correct.
I would be grateful if one or two could let us know what the positives of these “pop tunes” are? I only see negatives.Ironically of course it’s Wincanton that now has the longest running NH sponsor, with the 62nd running of the Badger Beer Chase last November. That’s another meeting moved from Thursday to Saturday, but it faces less competition from other meetings on the same day.
I agree with Drone and Yeats about the music issue. I recall being at both Warwick and Uttoxeter when loud music was blaring out over the public address before racing and sometimes between races.
Whoever thought that was a good idea clearly does not understand that sitting quietly by the paddock is one of the most pleasant aspects of a day at the races.
This is also not so easy to do at racecourses which employ a race day host to give a running commentary throughout the day. I recall one such host at Plumpton recommending backing a horse each way – in a four runner race!
Where can I join the Noise Abatement Society?
I compiled a list of old race names used by each racecourse in 1982 (excluding nearby villages, and sponsors) with a view to writing a few paragraphs about the derivation of each one. Explaining, for example, who was Jim Ford? What is Victor Ludorum? What is the temple referred to in the Temple Stakes, and so on.
It’s all in the rather esoteric interest of preserving some increasingly forgotten racing heritage. I’m glad to see some people here care about it. One day I hope to start putting it on a Jockeypedia-type website. I have about 800 names on my list and I’ve written mini-essays about a quarter of them.
1982 was an arbitrary choice, before sponsorship was completely rampant.
If any of you would like to chip in with contributions, however obscure, please answer here or message me. There’s no rush, this is taking me years.According to Wikipedia:
The race was named in honour of Jim Ford, a local trainer who won the 1955 Cheltenham Gold Cup with Gay Donald.
It was run between 1980 and 2008 (and was mostly won by decent 3m2f performers <- I added this)
What happened to good old:
Newton Le Willows Police Juvenile Novices’ Hurdle???
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